(Corrects last name of reviewer from Warden to Walden in 
paragraph 18)    
 By Michelle Nichols    
 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Do Carrie and Mr. Big marry or don't 
they? That is the question "Sex and the City" fans hope is 
answered when the long-awaited film about love and friendship 
in New York City hits theaters worldwide this week.    
 Writer Carrie's relationship with a financier known as Big, 
the love lives, and fashion choices, of her friends -- 
publicist Samantha, curator Charlotte and lawyer Miranda -- 
enthralled millions of television viewers during six seasons.    
 And now four years after the series ended they are back 
with fans desperate to know the fate of Carrie and Mr. Big.    
 "Those people who like the show will expect the joy and the 
good times and the whimsy and the clothes and the cocktails and 
the salty language," said actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who 
plays Carrie and also produced the movie and TV series.    
 "But what they might not expect is that the shank of the 
movie is pretty sad," she said.    
 Based on Candace Bushnell's autobiographical columns in The 
New York Observer newspaper, the TV series won eight Golden 
Globes and seven Emmys and made Manolo Blahnik shoes and the 
Cosmopolitan cocktail household names.    
 The movie picks up where the series ended -- Carrie and Big 
are together, Samantha is in Los Angeles with her boy toy, 
Charlotte and her husband are raising their adopted Chinese 
daughter and Miranda is in Brooklyn with her husband and son.